AoC really puts the "massive" in MMO, so we've managed to see the title in various stages of beta testing． The main game is vast and in a weekend PvP match staged by the game's creators Funcom, we were given a little taste of it before trying to stick weapons into our fellow online human foes．

Here we encountered bandits, archers, apes and ugly beasts． Happily most of these creatures were quite easily dispatched, raising our experience level and allowing us to steal clothes - as the loin cloth was just not a good look - armour and items like gold teeth which no doubt would be able to be bartered at a merchant's stall or shop．

Certainly the combat looks like a traditional MMO： third person view, click on your target, and so on - but there's a real sense of immediate danger, especially when more than one foe attacks． We soon learned that - as well hard as we were - dashing into a camp full of thieves was bad news． Especially when they have pet jaguars．

The lobby offered us two options for PvP： Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag． Okay, not exactly reinventing the wheel, but our barbarian was now decked out in some decent togs and had a brutal looking sword - so we had a bash．

As our team had lost all the positions one can resurrect from we just had to sit patiently and watch the rest of the match play out． Most impressive was the fact there seemed a real team dynamic going on． Our death was actually delivered by two players working in tandem, first freezing and then frying our poor barbarian．

Picking a Cimmerian restricts you to picking between guardians, dark templar, conquerors, bear shaman, barbarians, and rangers． An Aquilonian get access to guardians, dark templar, conquerors, priests of Mitra, barbarians, assassins, and rangers．

So far we can say that though the game has a lot in common with other MMOGs like World of Warcraft, Age of Conan does manage to feel a little different because of its combat system． While you still need to manage a skill bar, your basic attacks (if you're a melee class) aren't just limited to click to auto-attack．

We should note that the volcano section is part of the single-player quest line at the game's beginning level 1 - 20 sections, so there aren't any others around． The Acheronian Ruins and White Sands clips are out in the multiplayer realm, however, and manage to hold up．

While many on various message boards made a big deal about the game's poor graphical performance issues during the beta testing phase, Funcom surprised just about everyone with some last-minute updates and enhancements．

The assassin is built to have the highest single-target DPS in the game． The assassin's feat trees, according to Funcom, change how they play more significantly than any other class, mostly because their functionality would otherwise be too limited．